In that case, you could ask the university to actively encourage students to improve your software as a part of a smaller project (Implement this feature, find some bugs, etc). You could also ask the university to finance a developer for this specific issue, or maybe put a proffessor with a clue on the job.
I did a math project in university on lagrangian points and read what I could find on the net - as far as I remember, there is a similar theory that our moon was formed in one of the Earth's lagrangian points, and grew bigger with asteroid crashes (or something similar), until it grew so big that the lagrangian points couldn't hold it any more, and it flew into orbit with earth.
Anyhow, this is purely speculation, but if you look closely enough into our universe, you might be able to find places where this is happening right now.
Simply watermark your applications before they are sent out - this will not prevent large-scale piracy, but let your customers know that the applications that they recieve are watermarked. That will scare off most of the possible pirates. Also, you could create unique keys easely from the MD5 of the watermarked program + the username.
Alternatively, send out patches through the customers mail, and not through the program itself - and maybe, you could even go as far as making them work *only* with the watermarked applications that your customer already has received.
I can just imagine Steve Ballmer going "With DAMN SMALL LINUX, you can get TWO WEBBROWSERS, a PDF READER, a MPEG PLAYER, a PAINT PROGRAM, a CD BURNING TOOL, and MUCH MUCH MORE!... in how much do you think? HOW MUCH? 500 MEGABYTES? A THOUSAND? NO! It's just 83 MEGABYTES! 83 MEGABYTES!"
I believe that you are wrong. Being of a non-hetero sexuality doesn't mean that you automatically become an attention whore. People has these sexualities because it is what they like, and the things that turn them on. Having this "attribute" to them doesn't mean that they automatically become attention whores, they are still normal people. But some who might've kept it to themself may have lived in denial of their sexuality - thinking that you might be gay is not easy if you are a 15-year old teenager. These people who have "jumped out of the closet", or whatever you have called it, might actually be extremely happy because they finally found a balance with themself and their sexuality. Being 17½, I've just kissed my first girl (I have had a hard time finding one that I could fit with), and it's not just something that I can really keep as a secret. First of all, there was other people who saw it at the party, but I also have an urge to tell others how happy I am that I am finally breaking through and starting to get to know and understand girls in more private ways. But I am an attention whore:)
Caring for your grammar and your spelling seems to become less and less important to many people outside acedemic enviroments. Being a 17 year old dane myself I shouldn't be the one noticing, but it has become so clear that spelling and grammar is going into the toilet that even I can see it.
One thing I have noticed recently is people switching between "then" and "than". It's a common error on the European WoW servers, which I recently joined. Going from a pretty high-class programming IRC channel filled with Americans and Englishmen (such words should be capitalized, right?) to a non-english gamin enviroment was quite harsh to my grammar. I actually noticed my writing abilities going slightly downwards after starting to chat on these servers.
I have thought about how to solve these kind of problems, but I have yet to come up with an useful solution. I'm trying to be as much "grammar nazi" as possible, but it seems to have little effect with the people that I talk to.
I do not understand how a game can take up 9 gigabyte of space. I mean, sure, they can take up quite a bit with all those fancy textures and meshes and maps and cutscenes, but 9 gigabyte? These games must be half movie half game or something. When you see what can be done in just 64kbyte, you will truely understand what can be done in 9 gigabyte. The key is sizeoptimization and a good overview over your data, and of course some heavy compression. But the problem is that nowadays game developers does not care about size because they have an infit amount of space for their game. I mean, look at the good old SNES RPG Chrono Trigger. It takes up 4 mbytes, but can take above 20 hours to play through.
The Gathering is not a fullblodded demoparty, but rather a combined LAN and demoparty. The largest demoparty, Breakpoint 2005, was held at the exact same time as TG, and we had "live" contact on the bigscreen from time to time.. great fun:P
Anyway, if you wanna see PC art, check out the Breakpoint entries too.
Mordheim is a fun tabletop game from Fanatic Games (part of Games Workshop), set in a ruined town in the Warhammer Fantasy world. Each player takes up the control of a warband of a few models (4 to 8, usually) and starts battling each other through scenarios, earning experience points (for levels), gold, skills, and all sorts of unexpected things (especially when dying).
The basic rules are much like those in Warhammer, with the same kind of stats, but with a few additions to make it more fit for skirmish.
All you need is a few buildings, some models, and some pens and sheets, and then you will be ready for playing.
And best of all, the rules are freely avaible on Mordheim's website
I live in Denmark where all ratings on movies and music is guiding - here we have a very relaxed relationship to 18+ movies and games. There have never been a problem with a shootout in a school, nor have there been anyone harmed by this (as far as I know).
Right now, with a forced ratings, and not a guiding one, it seems like that some freedom and control is removed from the individual, and put somewhere where it should not be.
Back in the BETA period, there was a few "sandbox" servers running. They were in no way interesting to be at, but they were there. I wouldn't be surprised if one or two of those have evolved into something more playable.
Doesn't sound like a big deal to me, it's probably not even 0,1% of what they have in total. I would also believe that they have their money in Yen, so that the low dollar price would affect them even *less*.
In that case, you could ask the university to actively encourage students to improve your software as a part of a smaller project (Implement this feature, find some bugs, etc). You could also ask the university to finance a developer for this specific issue, or maybe put a proffessor with a clue on the job.
I did a math project in university on lagrangian points and read what I could find on the net - as far as I remember, there is a similar theory that our moon was formed in one of the Earth's lagrangian points, and grew bigger with asteroid crashes (or something similar), until it grew so big that the lagrangian points couldn't hold it any more, and it flew into orbit with earth. Anyhow, this is purely speculation, but if you look closely enough into our universe, you might be able to find places where this is happening right now.
Simply watermark your applications before they are sent out - this will not prevent large-scale piracy, but let your customers know that the applications that they recieve are watermarked. That will scare off most of the possible pirates. Also, you could create unique keys easely from the MD5 of the watermarked program + the username.
Alternatively, send out patches through the customers mail, and not through the program itself - and maybe, you could even go as far as making them work *only* with the watermarked applications that your customer already has received.
I can just imagine Steve Ballmer going "With DAMN SMALL LINUX, you can get TWO WEBBROWSERS, a PDF READER, a MPEG PLAYER, a PAINT PROGRAM, a CD BURNING TOOL, and MUCH MUCH MORE!... in how much do you think? HOW MUCH? 500 MEGABYTES? A THOUSAND? NO! It's just 83 MEGABYTES! 83 MEGABYTES!"
Yeah, that's not much if it's your only income (luckily, I guess that they have other things to use their coding skills for).
I believe that you are wrong. Being of a non-hetero sexuality doesn't mean that you automatically become an attention whore. People has these sexualities because it is what they like, and the things that turn them on. Having this "attribute" to them doesn't mean that they automatically become attention whores, they are still normal people. But some who might've kept it to themself may have lived in denial of their sexuality - thinking that you might be gay is not easy if you are a 15-year old teenager. These people who have "jumped out of the closet", or whatever you have called it, might actually be extremely happy because they finally found a balance with themself and their sexuality. Being 17½, I've just kissed my first girl (I have had a hard time finding one that I could fit with), and it's not just something that I can really keep as a secret. First of all, there was other people who saw it at the party, but I also have an urge to tell others how happy I am that I am finally breaking through and starting to get to know and understand girls in more private ways. But I am an attention whore :)
Caring for your grammar and your spelling seems to become less and less important to many people outside acedemic enviroments. Being a 17 year old dane myself I shouldn't be the one noticing, but it has become so clear that spelling and grammar is going into the toilet that even I can see it.
One thing I have noticed recently is people switching between "then" and "than". It's a common error on the European WoW servers, which I recently joined. Going from a pretty high-class programming IRC channel filled with Americans and Englishmen (such words should be capitalized, right?) to a non-english gamin enviroment was quite harsh to my grammar. I actually noticed my writing abilities going slightly downwards after starting to chat on these servers.
I have thought about how to solve these kind of problems, but I have yet to come up with an useful solution. I'm trying to be as much "grammar nazi" as possible, but it seems to have little effect with the people that I talk to.
Titanbar, Blizzard built-in extra action bars (turned on through the interface menu), that's the main stuff. Looks like he's using "MoveAnything" too.
OS X - A simple OS for simple minds.
Conquer.
I do not understand how a game can take up 9 gigabyte of space. I mean, sure, they can take up quite a bit with all those fancy textures and meshes and maps and cutscenes, but 9 gigabyte? These games must be half movie half game or something. When you see what can be done in just 64kbyte, you will truely understand what can be done in 9 gigabyte. The key is sizeoptimization and a good overview over your data, and of course some heavy compression. But the problem is that nowadays game developers does not care about size because they have an infit amount of space for their game. I mean, look at the good old SNES RPG Chrono Trigger. It takes up 4 mbytes, but can take above 20 hours to play through.
6 minutes of nothing.
You have ~900 Gb of pr0n? GIMME!
Why didn't they just make the probe from the same material as the black box then? ;P
...HL2 cum tech-demo... Some perverts seems to have been poking with the physic engine again ;P
The Gathering is not a fullblodded demoparty, but rather a combined LAN and demoparty. The largest demoparty, Breakpoint 2005, was held at the exact same time as TG, and we had "live" contact on the bigscreen from time to time.. great fun :P
Anyway, if you wanna see PC art, check out the Breakpoint entries too.
This phone conversation has a good touch of Microsoft Sam.
It would be good to know if they had destroyed it yet.
Mordheim is a fun tabletop game from Fanatic Games (part of Games Workshop), set in a ruined town in the Warhammer Fantasy world. Each player takes up the control of a warband of a few models (4 to 8, usually) and starts battling each other through scenarios, earning experience points (for levels), gold, skills, and all sorts of unexpected things (especially when dying).
The basic rules are much like those in Warhammer, with the same kind of stats, but with a few additions to make it more fit for skirmish.
All you need is a few buildings, some models, and some pens and sheets, and then you will be ready for playing.
And best of all, the rules are freely avaible on Mordheim's website
Steve Balmer must have been one of them.
I live in Denmark where all ratings on movies and music is guiding - here we have a very relaxed relationship to 18+ movies and games. There have never been a problem with a shootout in a school, nor have there been anyone harmed by this (as far as I know).
Right now, with a forced ratings, and not a guiding one, it seems like that some freedom and control is removed from the individual, and put somewhere where it should not be.
This is such a straightforward invention. I hope that similar inventions like this will see the daylight. It's all so straight forward.
Back in the BETA period, there was a few "sandbox" servers running. They were in no way interesting to be at, but they were there. I wouldn't be surprised if one or two of those have evolved into something more playable.
And Id and Valve, now that we are at it.
Doesn't sound like a big deal to me, it's probably not even 0,1% of what they have in total. I would also believe that they have their money in Yen, so that the low dollar price would affect them even *less*.